Enrollment in private schools still lagging

With less than two million enrollees, Education Secretary Leonor Briones said that the low enrollment in private schools for this school year remains a challenge for the entire education sector.

Based on the national enrollment data of the Department of Education (DepEd) as of Sept. 1, there are 1, 923, 179 enrollees in private schools this School Year (SY) 2020-2021 including those in the Kindergarten, Elementary, Junior High School (JHS) and Senior High School (SHS) as well as non-graded learners with disabilities.

Briones, during a televised briefing with President Duterte on Aug. 31, admitted that among the remaining challenges for DepEd is the low enrollment rate in private schools which is only 44 percent of last school year’s total enrollment. There are 4.3 million enrollees in private schools in SY 2019-2020.

While more than 50 percent of last SY’s enrollment has yet to come back to private schools, Briones expressed optimism that the private education sector will still be able to catch up in terms of enrollment.

“We believe that with the opening of the economy, parents who have lost jobs will find new ones and the OFWs will also get jobs because many of them usually send their children to private schools - small or big private schools,” Briones said.

While the Aug. 24 formal opening for this school year was moved to Oct. 5, DepEd allowed private schools - especially those that have started their operations as early as July - to proceed with their respective schedules and school calendars.

DepEd data as of Aug. 17 showed that there are 5, 601 private schools that have opened and will open this school year. Before Aug. 24, DepEd said that there are 1, 672 private schools that started their school year. On Aug. 24, a total of 3, 264 private schools opened followed by 56 more schools until the end of August.

DepEd is expecting 12 private schools to open from Sept. 1 to 4; 12 schools from Sept. 7 to 18; three schools from Sept. 14 to 18; one school from Sept. 28 to Oct. 2; and 12 schools to open from Oct. 5 to 9. There are also 555 more private schools set to open this school year but their school opening dates are not announced.

In SY 2019-2020, there were 14, 435 private schools which operated nationwide.

Meanwhile, there are 398, 754 students from private schools who transferred to public schools as of Sept. 1. Of this number, 243, 893 are in elementary; 106, 120 are in JHS; 42, 054 are in SHS; and 6, 597 non-graded learners with disabilities.

Apart from private schools, the Alternative Learning System (ALS) - which is one of the flagship programs of agency - also has a lower enrollment rate this SY. The ALS is a parallel learning system under DepEd that provides a practical option to the existing formal instruction. As of Sept. 1, there are 365, 602 enrollees in ALS compared to almost 760,000 enrollees last school year.

Despite this, Briones expressed confidence that enrollment in ALS will also increase in the coming weeks. “In the ALS, the students are working… they go to school at night and they go to school on weekends but since some of them lost their jobs, they are looking for ALS so enrollment is slowly picking up,” she ended.